WILLIAMS, ALFRED. — Nature and Other Poems.

London: Erskine Macdonald, 1912. 1st edition. Pp.95, owner's details (Henry Pond, Gas Works, Marlborough,1912) to inside front board, occasional light spotting. Blue cloth, gilt title to front and spine, minor wear to top and tail of spine. G+.** Alfred Owen Williams (1877–1930) was a poet, writer and a collector of folk song lyrics who was born and lived most of his life at South Marston, near Swindon. Tthe son of a carpenter, he grew up in poverty after his father abandoned his wife and eight children. He became a farm labourer at eleven, and then, when he was fourteen, he entered Swindon Railway Works, where he worked as a steamhammer operator for the next twenty-three years. He was almost entirely self-taught, producing his most famous work, Life in a Railway Factory (1915), in his spare time after completing a gruelling day's work in the Great Western Railway works in Swindon. He was nicknamed “The Hammerman Poet”.